


Anything But Interesting

by parentaladvisorybullshitcontent



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 00:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13376385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parentaladvisorybullshitcontent/pseuds/parentaladvisorybullshitcontent
Summary: “I just kissed you,” Todd says, feeling himself flush. “For, like, the first time, and - and that’s -”“Interesting, yes,” Dirk says, eyes bright. “Didn’t you think so?”In which kissing Todd is interesting, apparently - whatever that means





	Anything But Interesting

**Author's Note:**

> aaaaaaaah holy fuck ok, I'm very very new at this and I'm terrified and - well, here it is. It's daft but it's all I've got
> 
> This is for wavydanrises, who encouraged me to post this. Shout out to leblonde, who's gonna get mild spoilers for s2 by reading this (I'm sorry) <3
> 
> Speaking of which, this is set post-s2 but I don't think there are any huge spoilers? You definitely don't need to have seen s2 to understand what's going on, anyway

The first thing Dirk says after Todd kisses him for the first time is, “Interesting.”

“Interesting?”

Dirk nods. There are spots of colour high in his cheeks.

Todd falls back a little, embarrassed.

He feels like the moment’s gone. He feels like he just walked in on the two of them somehow and saw the whole scene from an outsider’s perspective - how close he is, how his hand’s, like, planted on the wall by Dirk’s head, effectively trapping him there, like some gross guy who hangs around in the hallways outside nightclub toilets. Except Todd isn’t one of those guys, he hopes, and they’re not in a nightclub they’re in Dirk’s office.

(“Our office,” Todd says about twenty times a day.

“ _My_ office,” Dirk repeats, smugly, and Todd never has to look to know that he’s gesturing at his dumb sign that has his dumb  _Dirk_  dumbass  _Gently’s Holistic_ whateverwritten on it, like  _that_ means anything.)

“I just kissed you,” Todd says, feeling himself flush. The words don’t come out sounding right, he sounds as flustered and humiliated and  _stupid_  as he feels. “For, like, the first time, and - and that’s -”

“Interesting, yes,” Dirk says, eyes bright. “Didn’t you think so?”

This entire situation is getting away from Todd so fast, but all he can gather from anything Dirk just said is that  _interesting_  might not necessarily mean bad. Or at least, he’s pulling that face - the face where he’s about to smile but hasn’t quite gotten around to it yet.

“I, I mean,” Todd says, the back of his neck prickling a little. “ _Interesting_  isn’t exactly the word I would’ve used.”

“Really?” Dirk says, face falling a little. He brightens up quickly though, a warm hand reaching up to touch the back of Todd’s neck. “That’s alright, you were probably just doing it wrong. Here.”

And he’d kissed him, just like that.

When they pull apart a second time, Dirk’s breathless. Todd is too, come to that, but it looks better on Dirk somehow.

“There, see?” Dirk says. His usual smugness at being right about something doesn’t really work like this. Todd likes that. “That’s how it’s done.”

Todd’s about to say something lame and awful like  _oh I’ll show you how it’s done_ , he really is, so maybe it’s for the best in the end that Dirk’s phone rings in his pocket before he can actually make a total fool of himself.

-

  
  


They don’t talk about it.

Dirk talks about everything. He talks about some weird show he watched on TV last night, and how the new brand of coffee they’ve started buying at the office smells like hazelnut. He talks about the ebb and flow of the universe and laments at length when he notices that one of the laces of his favorite shoes is fraying.

He talks too much, actually. Or maybe Todd’s just imagining it - imagining him talking more, imagining him doing it out of fear that if he draws breath Todd might actually get a word in and bring up the thing they’re not saying.

Stuff like,  _hey, so I kissed you and you said it was interesting and now we’re not talking about it even though you spent twenty minutes this morning talking about clouds and your opinions on the different types_.

 _Hey, so I kissed you and I’m worried I fucked up and you’re making it worse by not acknowledging that it even happened_.

 _Hey, so what the fuck does_ interesting _mean anyway?_

-

“I told you to leave a message after the tone, asshole,” Amanda says immediately after answering the phone.

“Uh, no you didn’t?” Todd says. He can hear the usual noises of mayhem, destruction and yelling in the background. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, it’s you.”

“Well, yeah. Who did you think it was?”

“Nobody,” Amanda says. “What’s up? This isn’t the best time, everyone’s…” There’s a war cry in the background that Todd thinks is probably Vogel, and the sound of glass being smashed. “Eating.”

“Right, okay,” Todd says, already regretting calling. “I just - I wanted to, you know. Make sure you’re okay. And you’re okay, which is great, so I’ll just-”

“Shut up and tell me what’s wrong.”

So he does. Kind of.

"She said it was interesting.”

“Uh huh,” Todd says. His palms are sweating and he swaps the phone from one hand to the other so he can wipe them on his jeans.

“You kissed someone and she said it was interesting.”

“Yeah, okay, I think we established that,” Todd says. “So what does interesting mean?”

“Screw that,” Amanda says. “Who did you kiss?”

“I,” Todd says. “Farah?”

“Uh huh, yep, nice try, except that happened  _months_ ago,” Amanda says. Todd really wishes he hadn’t called. “Even if it was her you wouldn’t call me about it. You’d talk to Dirk.”

Todd pulls a face.

“I-”

“Okay, maybe you wouldn’t talk to Dirk,” Amanda says. Todd can tell by the way her voice sounds the exact look she has on her face right then, and for a second he misses her so much it hurts.

“Yeah, no,” Todd agrees.

“And if it was anyone else you’d probably talk to Farah,” Amanda says. “I mean, I’d talk to Farah.”

“As great as this is,” Todd says. “I really need you to tell me I’m not going crazy over the whole  _interesting_ thing.”

“You’re not going crazy,” Amanda says, dutifully. “Interesting’s, like, a good word. It’s positive. Why don’t you just ask her what she…” She trails off. “Oh God.”

“Amanda?”

“Tell me you didn’t.”

“I didn’t,” Todd says, guiltily, even though he has no idea what she means. “Whatever it is, I didn’t do it.”

“You kissed Dirk!”

“I didn’t!” Todd protests. “There was a distinct use of female pronouns, I would’ve told you if I’d-”

“Oh my  _God_ ,” Amanda says, ignoring him. “And he said it was interesting? Damn.”

“Amanda-”

“Actually, that’s kind of a game changer,” She says, thoughtfully. “Like, he’s a weird guy, it’s a weird thing to say…That means everything’s fine.”

“But you admit that interesting is a strange – wait,” Todd says. “You’re not surprised about this. At all.”

“No shit,” Amanda says. The sound of yelling starts up again in the background and she adds, “Okay, I’m gonna have to go. Just talk to him about it like regular people do. Gross, I know, but it’ll help.”

“I guess. But I-”

“Love you, bye,” Amanda says, all in one breath, and hangs up.

“Great,” Todd says, to no one.

-

If Dirk was a real detective – a  _normal_  detective, the kind who collected clues and compared fingerprints – he’d probably at some point make a list of all the facts in the case at hand.

But Dirk isn’t a normal detective, which means by association Todd isn’t a normal detective’s assistant. That doesn’t stop him jotting down a mental list of all the things he knows for sure about The Interesting Thing that happened a week ago that Dirk seems to be in no hurry to talk about.

1\. He kissed Dirk

He hadn’t meant to. He hadn’t  _planned_  to, not really. He’d been toying with the idea for ages, never really expecting to follow through with it, and then -

And then there’d been something about the way the light touched the tips of Dirk’s hair, and the way his smile made his eyes so soft, somehow, the fondness there always making Todd feel a little off-kilter, ever since the early days.

It feels like it’s something he doesn’t deserve, like when Dirk looks at him like that he should reel off a bunch of reasons why he doesn’t  _deserve_  to be looked at that way.

It feels like Dirk knows half of those reasons and still carries on looking at him like that.

2\. Dirk said, “Interesting.”

This is the part he’s struggling with. The more he tries to remember the way Dirk had said it, the look on his face in the late afternoon light, the more it slips away from him like sand through his fingers. He doesn’t know whether Dirk was saying,  _interesting, let’s do that again_  or _interesting, that was fucking awful_. There’s literally no way to tell.

And then there’s probably the most baffling point on Todd’s list of events, which is

3\. Dirk kissed him

But it’d been like it was part of a case, like some stupid little game of oneupmanship – like the time Dirk had bet Todd he couldn’t do a better cartwheel than him. Todd had tried and knocked Farah’s organiser off her desk, and then Dirk had been all like,  _now you’ll see how the professionals do it, Todd_ , and he’d just done this perfect cartwheel in the middle of the office and straightened up all, like, red-faced and smug about it.

That’s what the second kiss had been like. Like Dirk wanting to one-up a bad cartwheel. Which means that Todd’s initial first kiss – that nerve wracking first kiss – was bad. Because if it hadn’t been bad, why would Dirk have insisted on a do-over?

Todd’s head hurts with considering it all. The thought of talking to Dirk about it is making him feel more and more nauseous the more time passes.

He doesn’t want to. Or he thinks he shouldn’t. Maybe the fact that they haven’t talked about it is the universe’s way of giving him a reprieve, a get out of jail free card. He messed up for the millionth time and they don’t have to talk about it.

It’s not like Dirk’s showing any sign of even mentioning it ever again, anyway. Maybe this is just how it’s meant to go.

-

On a Thursday afternoon nine days after The Interesting Thing happened, Todd snaps.

It turns out, he thinks, grinding his teeth, that the only thing greater than his own anxiety is his jealous streak. Dirk’s been talking to some guy who rocked up at the office for the past half an hour – some guy called Nigel who has an ugly moustache and an uglier Rolling Stones t-shirt.

Everything about Nigel, apparently, is  _interesting_.

Todd thinks he’s losing his mind. He thinks he might just quit and get a job in a store somewhere.

But of course he doesn’t. He just stands, leaning against his own desk with his arms folded, and glares daggers into the back of Nigel’s stupid shaggy head. Not that he thinks anyone’s noticed until Farah appears out of nowhere and hands him a coffee.

“ _That_  is a face,” She says.

“It’s the only one I’ve got.”

“Hmm,” Farah says, leaning against the desk next to him. “Who  _is_  that guy?”

“Nigel,” Todd says in a low voice, scowling over at where Dirk’s laughing at whatever  _interesting_  thing Nigel apparently just said. “He’s interesting.”

“Okay,” Farah says, joining Todd where he’s leaning up against the table. “Is he, like, case-related interesting, or…?”

“Ask Dirk,” Todd says, sullenly.

“Okay,” Farah says, slowly. “That’s one hell of a mood you’ve got there. D'you wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Right,” Farah says. “Well. I’ll be over here. Drinking coffee. Staying calm.”

And she goes and sits down at her desk, leaving Todd feeling even worse, if that’s possible, for being rude to her.

-

When Dirk leaves to show  _interesting_  Nigel out of the building, Todd makes Farah another coffee to apologize.

“I-”

“It’s fine,” She says, taking the coffee and sipping it. “I mean, it’s not  _fine_ , like, don’t be rude, but – I understand.”

“Okay,” Todd says, wondering what exactly it is she understands.

“You didn’t talk to him about it yet, did you?”

Todd blinks, feeling himself flush. For one second he thinks maybe if he comes up with a lie that’s convincing enough he can get out of even having to talk about it.

Except Farah’s not stupid, and she’s giving him this look that’s all eyebrows.

"Amanda?” He asks in the end, warily.

“Yep,” Farah says. “If it helps she kind of thought I already knew. Sort of.”

“Jesus.”

There’s silence for a moment.

"Did he really say it was interesting?”

“Yeah,” Todd says, sighing. “Yeah, he did.”

Farah nods.

“I mean, it’s sweet.”

“Is it?” Todd asks, somewhat desperately.

“For Dirk,” She corrects herself, quickly, with a smile. “It’s sweet for Dirk.”

Todd doesn’t say anything to that because he feels like there isn’t anything he  _can_ say. People are so hard to read, and Dirk’s about as far from  _people_ as it’s possible to get. How’s Todd meant to know what interesting means? How’s anyone meant to know that?

“If it helps,” Farah says. “Kissing you isn’t bad.”

“It isn’t bad,” Todd repeats, hollowly. “That’s - that’s a ringing endorsement, thanks.”

“What?” Farah says. “When something isn’t bad is good! It’s the opposite of bad.”

“Er, no,” Todd says. “Not bad is like,  _okay_. It’s  _mediocre_.”

“I didn’t say  _not bad_ , I said _it isn’t bad_ ,” Farah says. “It’s completely different.”

“I think I prefer interesting.”  
  
Farah laughs, out of nowhere.

“Sorry,” She says, guiltily. “Sorry, I just. It’s kind of funny.”

“Yeah, it’s hilarious,” Todd says, dryly, but he ends up laughing too.

“Look,” She says, after a moment. “When he comes back up, I’ll go out for a while and you can talk to him about it.”

Todd shakes his head before she’s even halfway done speaking.

“Yeah, no, I-”

“I mean, I’m gonna go anyway,” Farah says. “So…you guys can just sit up here in awkward silence or you can actually talk about it.”

Awkward silence sounds like the right option for Todd. He thinks so right up until Dirk gets back, humming under his breath, and Farah gives him a pointed look across the room before saying something about needing to go to a meeting.

“A meeting?” Dirk says, after she’s gone. “But…she works with us. Who’s she having meetings with? Shouldn’t it be, well, us?”

Todd just shrugs. Dirk raises his eyebrows and nods like Todd’s single shoulder movement made an excellent point.

“D'you want a coffee?” Dirk asks, moving over to the coffee machine. “You know what I really want? Tea. A really specific brand of tea, too, I think it’s hard to get over here. I was just talking to Nigel about it.”

“Who  _is_ he?”

“Nigel?” Dirk asks, bemused. “I don’t know. I think he was delivering something to another office.”

“Wait,” Todd says. “So that wasn’t about a case? Him being here for, like, an hour? That was just – just -”

“Just a conversation about tea,” Dirk says. Todd watches him pour himself out a coffee and add four spoons of sugar. “It was interesting.”

Todd really wants to let it go. He really does. He really wants to be calm and zen and secure in himself.

Except he’s never really been any of those things.

“Interesting’s just a word for you, isn’t it,” He says. He knows he’s being irrational before the sentence is even halfway out of his mouth, but he can’t stop himself. “It’s just, like,  _oh, interesting_. Like those meaningless words kids say when they’re talking about stuff. Oh, that’s so rad, oh, that’s awesome, that’s - that’s _tubular_ -”

“I-I don’t think people really say that last one anymore, to be honest,” Dirk says, holding his finger up like he’s raising a hand in class, like Todd’s giving a lecture or something.

“Whatever.”

“Er, okay,” Dirk says, slowly, understandably taken aback by Todd blowing up over such a small thing. God, why does he always have to be such an asshole? “Did – did something happen? Are you alright? Is Amanda alright?”

“What?” Todd asks. He shakes his head at himself. “She’s – she’s fine. Everything’s fine, I’m fine.”

“Yeah, you seem really fine,” Dirk says, frowning at him.

“I am,” Todd says. “I – I just. You know what I mean.”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” Dirk says, abandoning his coffee and moving over to perch on Todd’s desk. He looks worried now, which is the last thing Todd ever wanted to come of this. “Are you sure nothing’s happened?”

Todd shakes his head. What he means to say is,  _no, Dirk, everything’s completely fine_.

Instead, he says, “Was kissing me really that bad?”

“Oh,” Dirk says, looking baffled. “ _That’s_ what we’re talking about?”

Todd can hardly blame him for being a little lost, but that doesn’t stop him from saying “Of  _course_ that’s what we’re talking about.”

Dirk frowns, looking across the room for a second. Todd can practically see the cogs in his head whirring, trying to connect a harmless conversation about tea with the fact that they kissed.

Todd stands up, feeling jittery. He’d rather be standing up, he thinks, pacing up and down a little. That way if Dirk says  _actually, kissing you was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, including Blackwing_ , he can leave pretty quickly.

“I, okay,” Dirk says, after evidently coming up with nothing. “I mean, I must say, this is a rather strange way to approach the subject. Abrupt, and – and unexpected. But alright.”

“You said it was  _interesting_ ,” Todd says. “That’s what you said, isn’t it?”

“I-”

“And I just…I have to know. Did it suck? Was - was it  _bad_ , was - was I pushy? Did I make you feel like it  _had_ to happen, did you - did you go along with it because you felt  _obligated_? I - I’d feel a whole lot better if you gave me  _something_ about this. Something that’s  _not_  interesting,“ He adds, when Dirk opens his mouth to speak.

Dirk gives him a look.

"You’re really this upset because I said kissing you was interesting?”

“I’m not upset.”

“I mean, you seem a little upset,” Dirk says. There’s a moment when his tone changes from something that could be a joke to something that isn’t, and he frowns. “Interesting’s a positive word, you know. It’s not like I said, oh,  _dreadful_. Christ, that was awful. Bloody hell, don’t ever do that again.”

“Dirk.”

“I didn’t say any of those things. I said interesting. Because it  _was_ interesting.” He pauses, looking thoughtful. “The last thing I ever expected was for you to just up and kiss me in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon. Whenever I thought about it, I didn’t -”

“You what, sorry?” Todd says, quickly. Dirk looks like he regrets saying anything. “Wait a minute, you  _thought_  about me kissing you?”

“I might’ve,” Dirk says, slowly. “Considered it. As a sort of…holistic exercise.”

“You daydreamed about me kissing you as a holistic exercise?”

“Now I never said daydream,” Dirk protests. “You’re embellishing it, I said  _thought_. The way one might think about - about ordering food, or - or buying shoes -”

“You’re blushing,” Todd says. He can feel himself smiling obnoxiously and he doesn’t even care. “You really did daydream about - about that.”

“I never said daydream,” Dirk says, but his protests seem much weaker now for some reason. “But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t - consider it. Once.” He pauses. “More than once.”

“But never on a Tuesday at the office,” Todd says, still smiling.

“No,” Dirk says, smiling too. “Which is why it was interesting. I didn’t mean it in a  _bad_  way, although God knows how you could possibly interpret it like that.”

“Because everything’s interesting to you!” Todd says. “Birds and - and that guy in the airport last week, his shoes, they were interesting. Oatmeal, that was interesting once. Oh, and just then, everything  _Nigel_ said was so  _interesting_.”

“Why did you say it like that?”

“I-I didn’t say it like anything.”

“Yeah you did, you said  _Nigel_ , like that,” Dirk says. He narrows his eyes, thoughtfully. “You didn’t like Nigel.”

Todd could argue, but he feels like it’d be fruitless at this point. Sort of like handing over one of those  _do you like me check yes or no_  slips in school and then pretending you never had anything to do with it.

“No, I.” He sighs. “ _You_ seemed to like Nigel. A lot. And - I didn’t like that.”

“I didn’t like him a  _lot_ ,” Dirk says. “No more than I like anybody else we meet. What do you mean by –  _oh._ You thought I might daydream about  _him_ kissing me.”

“I mean, yeah, I guess,” Todd says, for lack of other options to choose from. “You do realise that counts as you admitting the whole daydreaming thing.”

“I was speaking from your point of view,” Dirk protests. “Since that’s obviously what you thought, I was humoring you.”

“Okay, sure,” Todd says, grinning. His face falls a little. “And you weren’t doing that when I kissed you? Humoring me?”

Dirk lets out a blustery sigh.

“We didn’t discuss it this much in my hypothetical daydreams, you know.”

“Your holistic exercises.”

“Yes, those,” Dirk says, not rising to it. “It all just sort of  _went on_ and the discussions happened off screen. I didn’t bother imagining them.”

“Okay,” Todd says. “But real life takes a little more talking out.”

“I guess,” Dirk says. “Anyway, no. I didn’t kiss you just because I felt like I  _had_  to, if that’s what you’re worried about. Surely if that’d been the case I wouldn’t have kissed you that second time. Because I hold my hand up, I was wholly responsible for the second time.”

“It’s not,” Todd says, smiling against his better judgement just because Dirk had raised his hand a little when he was talking, like he was swearing on a Bible in court or something. “This - this isn’t a case, you know, you don’t have to hold your hand up-”

“I do,” Dirk says. “ _I_ kissed  _you_. That’s an important distinction. You kissed me and  _then_ I kissed you.”

“I mean, yeah,” Todd says, slowly. It sounds so simple when Dirk puts it like that, like there was never anything to worry about at all.

“So you were worried about what, exactly?” Dirk says, like he read Todd’s mind.

“I don’t even  _know_ ,” Todd says, laughing with relief. Dirk beams at him, so he takes the few steps over to where he’s still sitting on Todd’s desk and touches the side of his neck. He’s tentative at first and then a little more sure when Dirk doesn’t, like, yell or flinch away from him. “You didn’t exactly seem like you wanted to talk about it before this.”

“We’re on a case,” Dirk says, softly, his voice fond. “Besides, you weren’t exactly talking about it either.”

“Well, no,” Todd says. “But that’s different, I thought I’d messed up. I was waiting for you to say something.”

“And I was waiting for  _you_  to say something,” Dirk says. “We could go back and forth on this all day.”

“We could,” Todd says. It’s crazy how light he feels, all of a sudden, like all of his worry and second guessing had been weighing him down up til now. “Hey, so. You said you never thought about us doing this on a Tuesday afternoon, right?”

“Right,” Dirk agrees, slowly, his hand resting on Todd’s side.

“But what about Thursday afternoons?”

“Oh,” Dirk says. It takes him a moment to get it, then he smiles. “That’s completely different. The stuff we’d hypothetically get up to on Thursday afternoons in my hypothetical not-daydreams-”

“Holistic exercises,” Todd says, again, grinning.

“Yes, yes, those,” Dirk says. “That was…it was…” He falters. “I can’t think of a funny thing to say, alright, but I’m really hoping that you’re still going to want to kiss me anyway.”

Todd grins at him. He feels dumb, he feels – he feels like he spent the last week and a half worrying over something that didn’t even need to be worried about. He feels like he needs to call Amanda and say,  _hey, I did it, I talked about it with him like regular people do and everything’s fine_.

“I’m kind of always gonna want to kiss you anyway,” He says.

“Oh,” Dirk says, evidently pleased. “Oh, okay. Well. I mean, I might have to invest in some mints, in that case, but other than that it sounds like a pretty excellent state of affairs. Much better than I expected. As a matter of fact I really feel like I should probably stop talking and kiss you now, if that’s alright.”

Todd laughs, touching the hair at the nape of his neck.

“It’s unbelievably alright, Dirk,” He says, still smiling when Dirk leans down to kiss him.


End file.
